


Half-Sick Of Shadows (the Finding A Way Out remix)

by tielan



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Alternate Universe - The Bourne Identity, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 09:02:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4515906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maria grew up being watched by men and women who knew how to handle a weapon; but this man – Steve – is something else. He knows how to handle a weapon, he knows how to handle himself, he knows how to handle other people with weapons.</p><p>And nowhere is that more clear than in the expensive, airy, Paris apartment where a man lies dead and glassy-eyed after being jabbed in the throat with a fountain pen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Half-Sick Of Shadows (the Finding A Way Out remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theladyscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyscribe/gifts).
  * Inspired by [the only person I know](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1227589) by [theladyscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyscribe/pseuds/theladyscribe). 



> Er. Bonus fic? :D

Her first thought is that she left the US to get away from all this.

Her second thought is, _My God, he's good at this._

The fifteen men to pick up one recalcitrant Senator’s daughter are summarily disposed of by one man. With a little help, of course: Maria has never been the cowering type. She shoulders aside one of the men flanking her, lashes out at the other with her foot. Her hands are bound but her fingers are free, and putting her elbow in the belly of the first man also brings her hands within grasping reach of his sidearm.

The warning shot echoes out through the icy portico of the old cathedral and the pigeons flutter and take wing in alarm. Her rescuer punches out the man who half-turned to meet the ‘new threat’, then whirls in a crouch, tossing blond hair back from startled blue eyes. He looks from her to the gun and back to her again, then judges her not a threat and rises to stand straight. “You’re a good shot.”

Maria jerks one shoulder. “I’ve practise.” She looks around at the unconscious men around them. “Looks like you have too.”

He hunts through the jacket of one of the downed men and finds a knife with which he slices through the cords around her wrists. “We have to get out of here.” Then he takes her by the sleeve of her coat and propels her along in front of him, matching his stride to hers as he shadows her, a hulking warmth at her back. “They’ll be back with more.”

She doesn’t question his certainty, not then. It’s not until he’s climbed into the passenger seat and closed the door behind him that Maria realises he hasn’t used any of the safewords, any code phrase, any identification.

But even as she opens her mouth to demand answers, sirens rise in a warning whine behind them.

“Drive,” he says, and she starts up the car and pulls out into the street. “Don’t speed.”

She’s tempted to retort that this isn’t her first rodeo, except it kind of is.

She’s in another country, she can’t go the authorities or the US Embassy, she’s just been helped by a complete stranger, and all her choices are bad.

Maria drives. She doesn’t speed.

* * *

 

She recognised that he was trained.

She just didn’t realise _how_ trained.

Maria grew up being watched by men and women who knew how to handle a weapon; but this man – Steve – is something else. He knows how to handle a weapon, he knows how to handle himself, he knows how to handle other people with weapons.

And nowhere is that more clear than in the expensive, airy, Paris apartment where a man lies dead and glassy-eyed after being jabbed in the throat with a fountain pen.

“Fuck,” she says, and for once her mental stepmother doesn’t admonish her in her head. Frankly, Elyse would be a screaming wreck if faced with this man and the carnage he’s caused; Maria’s father didn’t marry her for her capability and commonsense. “What _are_ you?”

He looks up at her with haunted and hunted eyes. “I don’t know.” Then, glancing at the window where the sirens have started up again, he says, almost absently, “Walk out of here. Walk out of here and drive away – head on wherever you were going. If you move now, you’ll be out of all this.”

It’s tempting. Oh, is it ever tempting. She’s been ‘in’ something ever since the day her father decided he’d be running for his father-in-law’s seat in Congress and trotted his family out so the media could see what a perfect modern family they were – father, daughter, second wife, and second family. And now that Maria’s an adult and the excitement of her father’s run at the Primaries has died down, all she wants to do is vanish.

She’s not going to achieve obscurity so long as this guy is around – not when he’s leaving a trail of bruised, battered, and bloody bodies behind him like this.

And yet…

“If we move now,” she says, her heart pounding in her chest, “we might both make it out ahead of the cops.”

He climbs to his feet, limber and graceful, even panting with weariness, after the brutality of the fight that left a man dead. “Why?”

Maria gives him a look. He has to ask this question _now_?

She gives him the truth, somewhat squashed down. “I know what it is to have no clear way out.”

* * *

 

Steve helps her cut her hair, wielding the scissors with unexpected skill and surprising care.

Then again, Maria thinks as she watches him in the mirror, this man is nothing like any assassin she ever imagined. She’s known men and women who were Secret Service; some who did the job, some who were the job. But those were matters of security and safety, not murder and mayhem.

A part of her wonders what he was like before his agency got hold of him and turned him into this man whose memories haunt him.

Somewhere in those fragmented memories, is there a woman who welcomed him back into her bed when he appeared at the door? Are there kids who wait for their father’s voice at the door, wondering what happened to him?

She hasn’t asked; he hasn’t told.

But if he does have a lover, a wife, a family, it doesn’t negate the heat in his eyes when their eyes meet in the mirror. It doesn’t change the way the brush of his hands against her nape sparks soft lightning beneath her skin. It doesn’t stop the tenderness in the trail of his fingers through her hair, sweet as a caress.

It doesn’t stop her from turning her head when his hand hovers by her cheek, brushing one strand that’s a little too long over her ear.

She turns her head, allows her lips to graze the back of his hand, slides her tongue out to lick gently at the tips of his fingers. And in the silence of the cheap hotel room, the sound he makes as she leans in to capture his fingers between her lips is very much a groan.

Maria wants and so does he. Steve gives, and so does she.

Mouths, hands, nails— He’s not an innocent, but she never expected him to be.

Tongues, legs, hips— She’s not an innocent either, and he doesn’t seem to mind.

Although, sprawled in the sheets afterwards, chests still heaving with exertion, he strokes a hand down her spine. “I’m not… I can’t… I don’t have anything—”

There’s a core of honour in him. Unexpected; In the midst of the memory loss shouldn’t a man be reduced to his basest instincts?

Maria puts her hand over his mouth to stop him before he can voice what doesn’t need saying. “Freely given, freely taken.”

She doesn’t want more. Not from this man who’s still trying to work out who he is.

* * *

 

The shores of the Adriatic are bright and beautiful, and nobody knows who she is.

Even if they did, she doubts that anyone would see Senator Hill’s willful daughter in the tanned, windblown woman running the bicycle hire.

It’s the closest to freedom that Maria’s ever been.

Sure, business is quieter right now – it’s the in-between season, neither the dead of winter when the American tourists come out, nor the height of summer when everyone’s around. But she has money to see her through, and the business is rolling along quite happily.

She glimpses the outline of him first – the shadow of him against the setting sun. She squints, not quite able to focus, then not quite able to believe, until he steps into the shade and her sun-shadowed eyes take in the sight of him with something that’s not quite hope, not quite belief.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” He looks…good. Better than good. He looks like she feels – free of his demons, of his past. “I’m looking for a bike to hire.”

“Yeah? Well, you’ve come to the right place.” She makes a gesture at the racks around him, then wonders what to ask. A week on the run and a brief sexual encounter isn’t what she’d call a solid start – but it is a beginning. “Are you here in the country very long?”

“I don’t know,” Steve says, smiling as he wanders in along the rows of bikes. “It depends on a few things.”

Maria forces herself to answer levelly, without any sign that her heart is pounding in her chest as he drifts closer, blue eyes steady upon her. “Well, we have a day to day rate, although the weekly hire is cheaper.” Her voice doesn’t tremble as he comes within arm’s length. “If you’re going to be here longer, then we should negotiate…” Her voice trails off as his hand cups her face, the thumb running along her cheekbone.

“We should negotiate,” Steve agrees, “Over dinner.”

“Dinner.” Maria says. Then thinks, _oh, fuck this,_ and rises up on her toes to touch her mouth to his.

He angles his head to deepen the kiss, like a homecoming long dreamed of. And there’s no past, no history, no shadows to haunt them, just the bright sun and the glittering sea.


End file.
